€42.00

"Running and Chanting and Falling and Ranting" is quite a unique book presenting Charlemagne Palestine complete video production. “Body Music I” (1973) and “Body Music II” (1974) were Palestine’s first incursions into the video medium. They were followed, from 1974 until 1979, by a series of works that together form one of the seminal and most distintive bodies of conceptual, performance-driven video of that decade. As a composer, performer and visual artist, Palestine has gained international recognition for his influential music, sound compositions and performances across six decades. His psychodramatic video works of the 1970s, which are less well known, transform and extend his sound and performance art into the electronic medium. Throughout these pieces, Palestine activates ritualistic movements and vocal expressions (hypnotic chants, screams, keening wails) as outward articulations of interior states. The very titles of these fervent enactments suggest extreme physical and psychological catharses, release and escape.

The book includes an essay by Lori Zippay titled “Body Music: Charlemagne Palestine’s Video Rituals”, a long interview by Serpentine Gallery director Hans Ulrich Obrist as well as a compact disc with the full soundtracks of “Body Music I”, “Body Music II”, “Island Song”, “Running Outburst” and “Tying Myself Up”.